Well, thanks to a friend in the know at AT&T who checked my address for service..It's not how far you are physically from the V-Rad, it's how long the lines are from the V-Rad to your home. I'm at 5000' when it needs to be 3000' or less. Oh well..

Bob

The views expressed here are my own and do not necessarily represent those of ABC, CBS, CW, FOX, MeTv, or AntennaTv; my employer; or its parent company.
Nor my wife for that matter!

I am set up for install on this coming Thursday, and will be specifically looking at the HD quality. All reports I hear are that the internet speeds are as good as advertised, but the HD can be suspect. I may end up cancelling the tv part and keeping the internet and phone part of it.

Hey Bob, can you get your friend at at&t to talk to the web department and get them to fix their notify me/interest form? I check it about once a week and it's still not working. Now that the Dish 922 was showed off at CES, I'm torn between getting that when its released and waiting to see if U-Verse comes to my area (Harris Blvd/Northlake Mall). The built-in slingbox looks outstanding but I don't know if its good enough to warrant a 2 year contract. I would def lock myself into a contract for 18Mb/1Mb, so bring it over here AT&T!

Quote:

Originally Posted by bdfox18doe

Well, thanks to a friend in the know at AT&T who checked my address for service..It's not how far you are physically from the V-Rad, it's how long the lines are from the V-Rad to your home. I'm at 5000' when it needs to be 3000' or less. Oh well..

Well, I finally got my U-verse installed today. He came around 2:15pm,and install took about 5 hours. I have the u200 package, with home phone and 10.0 internet, which is an upgrade from my old dsl of 6.0.
SD quality is pretty good, and HD is not bad. Not quite as good as my Directv, but very close. I am 2200ft from the unit that is in the front of my neighborhood. The video on demand is nice, especially the kids sections. Changing the channels is very fast, and the dvr seems much like my Directv one.
I do like the fact that I can run an ethernet cable from my box to the PS3 sitting right next to it so i don't have to rely on wifi for gaming. That is a definite plus. And my installer was very nice, even my 16month old daughter liked him. Overall i am satisfied for now, and I have 30 days to decide whether or not to keep it. Stay tuned.

I live in Catawba River Plantation. My neighbor got the service also. My internet speed is the 10mbps down 1.5 up. As for pricing, they were coming around my neighborhood selling it, and I got the 3 for 90 package and added what I needed.

I live in Catawba River Plantation. My neighbor got the service also. My internet speed is the 10mbps down 1.5 up. As for pricing, they were coming around my neighborhood selling it, and I got the 3 for 90 package and added what I needed.

Wow, I didn't realize how many Mount Holly Huntersville Rd. residents hang out at AVS!

I live off MHH, but on the other side of 16 past Wally World. I'm going to have to drive over there to check out the VRADs. I haven't heard when u-verse will be available here.

Not sure how long the price is good for just check the website and the offer i listed there. So far the service is good, and there are some channels where the HD looks just like Directv does. I am currently satisfied.

I have an appointment for UVerse installation on 2/24. Would you still recommend this? I am in S Chlt as well and it is available to a few houses in our neighborhood. i am getting conflicting reports on whether the fiber optic cable is run straight to my home - what did they do for you? Thanks.

Interesting! The do seem to be carrying about everyones analog OTA programs. They are missing the digital channels for WTVI, WUNE and WNSC. They are not carrying the digital SD channels for anyone.

They do map the channel numbers nicely in the guide. They use the stations OTA number for the analog channel and use +1000 for the associated the HD channel. So, WBTV HD becomes 1003

we have installation set up for 2/24. would you still recommend this?
do they run fiber optic to the home? are there any issues that i should know about? i plan to bundle phone, dsl and tv with U-Verse. Thanks.

I seldom post but given the shortage of info about U-Verse, or UV as it is coming to be known, I thought I would share my experience. I dabble in video as a professional on occasion and do lots of audio, so be forewarned, I can be a bit picky. I've always had AT&T phone services of some sort, and until recently was disappointed in their customer service. Seldom have I seen a 180-degree turn like theirs.

I recently moved into town (28211) from Lake Norman, where I had DirecTV. After they went mpeg4, I was reasonably happy with the picture and the service. At my new home trees present a problem, so when I found out UV was available, I made the call. Their price for the U300 package, DVR and four extra boxes, fast wireless internet, bundled with phone and cell service is saving me about thirty bucks a month over what I had.

The sales people were extremely efficient, professional, and polite. Ditto for just about everyone else (see below for the exception). There were two installers. The first guy got the box outside all wired up and checked the signal. At less than 1900 feet from the VRAD, I had an almost flawless feed with 40% of headroom at max capacity. The second installer did the inside. He ran all new cable in the crawl space to each TV and the gateway.

Initial setup went pretty well. I did most myself while he was finishing up in the back rooms. The wireless internet setup was almost automatic...no problems there. We hit a snag with the DVR remote. It would only work if held about a foot in front of the box. After swapping boxes, batteries, remotes, and trying everything in the book, the installer, who had now been at the house for almost eight hours and had a two day old baby at home, called his support guy. He said, “Turn off the TV and try the remote.” It worked. He asked what kind of TV it was (new 37" XBR6). Long story short, he says the TV interferes with the remote IR and I must turn off every picture feature on the TV and turn down contrast, backlight, etc. to min levels to get the remote to work, which was true. Now the remote worked, but the screen was basically black...I mean an awful picture. That had to be the most idiotic tech support solution I have ever heard, and I told them so. Kill the picture on my top of the line TV so their 5 dollar remote will function properly. Yeah right.

So I go to the UV forums and discover lots of people have the problem. I was ready to cancel. Another installer shows up next morning after I spent half the night trying almost every posted solution to no avail. I turn the thing on to show him the issue, reset the picture to "pro" mode, and now it works. I try “vivid” (no, I don’t use it), “normal,” and my custom calibrated setting, and they too work. It was a miracle I guess.

As to SD, it is SD. Some look OK and some look horrifying. HD on the premium channels for the most part is acceptable, but barely so. HD on the locals varies. CBS is almost as good as the premiums, which makes it borderline. FOX is a little below CBS, I haven't checked NBC since they canned the eye candy on Vegas. ABC is unwatchable. I have never seen so many artifacts except with DirecTV during a rainstorm.

Bottom line: the best HD channels are passable but significantly below DirecTV premiums. None come even close to WBTV OTA or a FOX Panthers broadcast. Of course, all are grossly inferior to a decent Blu-ray transfer so don't even think about the comparison there (apples to oranges). Not done unpacking and optical/5.1 speakers haven’t been hooked up yet so I can’t comment on audio at this point.

The worst UV channels are on a par with You Tube, and that includes their HD feed from ABC and a few other HD channels. I'll stick with them for a while and see if time really is the great healer. They seem very responsive to customer concerns now except for that one guy mentioned above and over at the UV forums, many longer term customers have seen an improvement over time. Ultimately, it will boil down to the HD feeds. If they improve, I’ll stay. If not, out comes the chainsaw and back to D*.

Actually, my HD feeds seem to have gotten better. There is some macroblocking there, but overall the picture seems to have gotten its act together. There does seem to be a variance in the picture on HD channels, wonder if its the Uverse or the channel itself, as some broadcasts sucked even when I had Directv.

I'm not anti-TWC so much as against throwing away money, especially in this economy. The house had analog TWC with RR and was well over 100 bucks a month for that. Even at those prices their stock is still sinking (I have some). I haven't seen their HD but have read the complaints. Right now UV's saving grace is their customer service.

I am still evaluating the various HD feeds. Last night, a couple of the premiums and A&E HD looked pretty decent. However, I'm still having problems with crushed blacks and blown highlights on just about every HD channel. Over on the UV forums, one guy who sounds like he works there says it has something to do with the way they encode, having to compress so much to get down to a little over 6 Mbps. I've tweaked the picture no end and can't seem to get what I am looking for, and had on DirecTV, even with factory defaults on an old Sony 720p set.

None of that explains why ABC can look like You Tube though. On just about any HD channel, anything with lots of squares, like buildings or checkered patterns, just falls apart. I know that pushes any video, but I seldom saw it so bad on D* except back in the HD Lite days. I'm just not happy with the mosquito noise, pixel shifting, luminance/color issues, etc., I'm seeing more than I ever noticed before. Overall though, the package, service, and price are hard to beat. I'll keep on tweakin' for now.

I'm not anti-TWC so much as against throwing away money, especially in this economy. The house had analog TWC with RR and was well over 100 bucks a month for that. Even at those prices their stock is still sinking (I have some). I haven't seen their HD but have read the complaints.

I agree that the TWC list prices are high. I switched from DirecTV back in late 2007 because our new house doesn't have a line of sight to the satellites and TWC offered digital cable for $34.95 for 12 months. Even after that deal expired they offered digital cable for $50 for another 12 months. I think the list price for digital cable is $72.

I'm not trying to sell TWC, I'm just letting you know that there is an HD alternative at prices that aren't as high as you think.

Please keep us updated on UV HD quality. As I noted above, it isn't an option in our neighborhood.

Well, if I wasn't anti-TWC before I am now. I went to turn in my modem today after cancelling two weeks ago. I was told, and they did note, that I could return it "at my convenience." After the in-person visit and FOUR phone calls, they finally did what they should have done in the beginning. The CSR I spoke with to cancel failed to enter my request or schedule a disconnect. They billed me for the last two weeks, and the next four. The second CSR says no problem, they will back-date the cancellation and credit me when I turn the modem in. They refused to do that at first until I started tossing some legal lingo around. After all the calls, it turns out they owe me fifty bucks instead of me owing them over a hundred.

I told them this was a perfect example of why I was dumping them. Almost without exception, in the past three years, I have had some sort of trouble with TWC on even the simplest requests for service changes, etc. Guess what their answer was..."We don't care." I then said that was the reason UV was going to take some market share from them, including my business. Verbatim, the guy's response was, "We don't care." My answer was simple: "Exactly my point." As soon as TWC climbs back near my buy price, I'm dumping the stock too. Even at its worst, I never was treated that way by DirecTV and AT&T as been tripping all over themselves to give me good service. The bills for the all the service changes, UV install, and first month service came today. I might not feel that way tomorrow after I open them!

Update: A small discrepancy with the AT&T phone bill due to all the service changes, but the UV bill, which came separately, had no surprises, exactly what they said it would be. As for the HD picture, more research leads me to two conclusions: 1) UV is indeed overdoing the compression in order to get two HD feeds and two SD feeds at once. I wish they would offer an option to have just one true HD feed, or alternatively, two, but without SD at any given point in time. In other words, let me control my 25 Mbps bandwidth usage instead of defaulting to 2/2 channels plus Internet. 2) Some of the artifacts I see are due to upgrading from 720 at 26" to 1080 at 37". That still doesn't explain the color/contrast etc. problems. A tech says that is solely due to their compression scheme (real-time single pass encoding focusing on the center of the picture and starving the background). The only thing you can do is calibrate your set as best you can and nothing will help the background/fast movement noise and blocking. It is what it is until they improve the encoders or raise the bandwidth.

Updated Update 1/29/08:

After considerable calibration and tweaks, my UV HD channels, well most anyway, look better. Still some noise, etc. though. Above I wished for more bandwidth per channel at my option. Apparently, that is the opposite of AT&T's plans. Who the heck needs three HD feeds plus a bunch more off of the DVR all at once? That is crazy. Just give me one nice live picture and one simultaneous record to DVR and keep the rest. Check this recent post on the main U-verse thread...

Quote:

Originally Posted by creemail

I know this is quite old. Has this happened for most people. I have had mine since Nov. Picture quality seems a tad bit better than when I first had it.